Pesticides campaign update and Freedom of Information request

If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you’re probably aware that we are planning to present our petition asking the City Council to stop spraying pesticides in the parks to the full council meeting on Thursday 7^th July. We’re trying to collect as many signatures as possible in the last few weeks. If we reach 750 signatures of people who live, work or study in Leicester, a senior council officer will be called to a public meeting to respond.

Thank you to everyone who has signed and shared it recently – the petition has grown significantly in the last fortnight so it’s working! If you haven’t signed and shared yet, there is still time. We’ll also be having one last street stall to collect paper signatures on Saturday 25^th June, on the edge of Victoria Park.

As part of our research for this campaign, we submitted a Freedom of Information request to the City Council to find out more about their use of pesticides on pavements over the last three years. We were particularly interested in this time period, as we saw more wild plants in the streets in 2020 and early 2021.

We asked the frequency with which the pavements were sprayed with pesticides in 2019, 2020 and 2021 and the chemicals that were used. They responded:

2019

Number of treatments - 3

Commenced – 08.04.19, 08.07.19, 14.09.19

Chemical – Glyphosate (this is a herbicide, designed to kill plants but known to have other effects as well – see below).

2020

Number of treatments - 1

Period - April - Oct

Chemical – Glyphosate, No mix

2021

Number of treatments - 3

Commenced – 17.05.21, 26.07.21, 03.10.21

Chemical – Glyphosate, Rosate adjuvant

We also asked if they could tell us the number of reported trips and falls due to ‘weeds’ in the pavements in the same years. They responded:

Number of reported weed concerns:

2019 – 13

2020 – 56

2021 – 17

Number of reported trips and falls:

2019 – 4

2020 – 2

2021 – 0

We found these numbers interesting, because it seems to show that having more wild plants in the pavements (as there were in 2020 and early 2021) doesn’t lead to more trips and falls. On the other hand, the increase in wild plant diversity and abundance was very apparent. Two local botanists came to our May meeting and told us that in 2020, they recorded 361 species of wild plant on 20 streets in Leicester. They found a similar number when they surveyed a comparable area of unimproved natural habitat. Cities don’t have to be botanical deserts. In fact, left alone, nature can thrive in a city. We just need to give it the chance.

The City Council seem to be more concerned about the complaints they receive about ‘weedy’ pavements. And yet, many of us are worried about the use of glyphosate in the city, especially when we see the evidence that it is linked to cancer in humans and harms wild bee colonies. Therefore, if you’ve signed our petition and you are wondering what to do next, we encourage you to write to your councillors and complain about the use of herbicides in Leicester. You can use the Write To Them website to easily find your councillors and send them an email. You don’t have to be an expert – just explain why you are worried. But if you would like more information to quote in your email, Pesticide Action Network have some useful information here. And if your councillors respond, we’d love to know! Forward us any responses you receive to help us plan the next steps of the campaign: leicesterfoe@gmail.com

Deborah Sawday - a lifelong activist

Deborah Mary Anne Sawday - 11th July 1944 to 19th October 2021

[With thanks to the ULAS Newsletter for the photo above and quote below.]

Almost no-one involved with Leicester Friends of the Earth in the last forty plus years can say they didn’t know Debbie Sawday. Determined, persuasive, creative, energetic fun-loving and effective as a committed environmentalist and campaigner - she has left a unique and lasting imprint on the group.

Born into a family with a successful local architectural practice, and the great granddaughter of Arthur Wakerley, who himself left his mark on Leicester politics and buildings, Debbie’s chosen career path was in archaeology, in which she developed a high level of specialism, becoming an expert in post-Roman and medieval pottery and earthenware.

As might be expected, Debbie’s funeral on Friday 5th November 2021 at Great Glen Crematorium, was very well attended, and included a number of former Leicester FoE campaigners, some even harking back to its beginnings.

We heard from her nephew Jonathon how she lived in London, on the King’s Road at the height of the swinging sixties, her dress and makeup responding fashionably to the Mary Quant look.

Her Leicester University work colleagues, too, recognised the multi-talented person that Debbie was. This extract from the ULAS (University of Leicester Archaeological Service) newsletter attests:

“…….. Debbie was University of Leicester Archaeological Services’ medieval pottery specialist, and had built up an encyclopaedic knowledge of her subject over more than forty years, with hundreds of reports to her name, including contributions to chapters in the recently-published Life in Roman and medieval Leicester volume.”

Debbie made sure her colleagues recognised and responded to environmental concerns:

“…….in terms of politics and attitudes, Debbie was very much a child of the 60s; she was ‘green’ before it was fashionable, never owned a car, cycled everywhere and was a passionate campaigner for Friends of the Earth. Her colleagues were used to having the latest petition thrust into their hands for signing, on entering the office!”

See full article here. 

Rachel Harriss – a campaigner in the 80s and 90s recalls; 

“Debbie was a tour de force.  You could not help but be drawn in by her energy and conviction. She was seemingly effortlessly adept at writing eloquent, and persuasive letters at the drop of the hat and shared her skills readily, rallying us all to do the same.

Hugely well informed, she was an avid devourer of the Environment pages of the Guardian and her newspaper clippings cabinet at 122 London Road was legendary.  In her articles for the newsletters, she pared down complex issues and gave us action points and catchy slogans that we could easily take out on to the streets. 

She also knew how to have fun. I recall many a late night at campaign HQ, or 122, as it simply became known, glass of red to hand, as we fashioned sandwich boards out of scavenged cardboard and poster paints. There were quite a number of parties, too, at Debbie’s then home (and one of the Leicester’s Arthur Wakerley buildings). On those hot summer evenings enjoying the open air on her cast iron balcony, it was a mix of friends, work colleagues and FoE co-campaigners. 

Debbie was also not averse to a spot of dressing up. I remember us commandeering a dinghy and dressing up in wetsuits, snorkels and armbands, ready to battle rising waters in a ‘Greenhouse Effect’ day of action. 

April 1989 stays with me particularly, calling on our High Street banks to reduce or write off the huge foreign debts accumulated by countries such as Brazil, whose government was hell bent on cutting down rainforests, in order to keep up with interest payments.  The burning season was about to begin again, forcing tribal peoples from forest homes, killing off rare species of plants and animals and releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide. Debbie arranged for some full-blown street theatre. Mourners, all in black, we staged a symbolic funeral procession down the London Road, armed with a cardboard coffin and a giant sized £3 billion cheque to pay Brazil to safeguard the forests for us all. I recall her fetching down one of her curtains to drape over the coffin - she knew both how to repurpose and to live lightly. We made merry hell outside the banks, collected hundreds of signatures, distributed thousands of leaflets and hit the Leicester Mercury big time.”

Debbie was rainforest campaigner for some time in the 1980s and ‘90s. Her resourcefulness, determination and indefatigability made for interesting and exciting events that drew public attention, poured scorn on careless and indifferent companies and institutions and contributed to the mounting pressure for action.

Another occasion, in 1993, helping to make and carry a giant draught excluder, Debbie joined the energy group drawing attention to the profligate waste of energy through the many and large shop open doors.

Harriet Pugsley recalls, along with Debbie and Sue Eppel taking part in a Day of Action at Raab Karcher, the timber merchant on Bede Island South. “We brazenly walked in and 'stole' away some tropical hard wood that we then labelled as being stolen property from the Brazilian Amazon.  Of course, this caused some consternation. The police being called, we had made our point and left without being handcuffed or locked up”. 

Celia Barden and I visited Debbie a few weeks before her death. She was undergoing further treatment for secondary cancers. Though fatigued, she was very positive and showed us around her lovely gardens at Knighton Church Road. The rear garden had a pond and many native species in the lawn and surrounding beds.

We miss you, Debbie.

Alan Gledhill